Last Updated June 14, 2022
Welcome to the inaugural episode of the new Real Estate Revolution! Our host, Kip Lohr, and guest Ryan Neal give the 411 on what’s been going on in the Bend/Redmond and Eugene/Springfield markets during the month of January 2022 before pivoting to an analysis of what’s in store for the rest of 2022.
Is there a real estate bubble that’s due to pop? Are prices going to keep going up, or will they go sideways or even down? Which price points will see the most action in 2022? What do buyers and sellers need to keep in mind?
Kip closes with tips for buyers on submitting a competitive offer in today’s crazy market. We’ll have more tips, interviews, and insights in the weeks ahead – stay tuned for the next Real Estate Revolution!
Voiceover:
Ladies and gentlemen, strap on your seat belts and hold on to your kombuchas. It’s time to get ready for the Real Estate Revolution.
Kip Lohr:
Hey, welcome. Are you ready for the Real Estate Revolution Podcast? I’m Kip Lohr with LOHR Real Estate, your host. And we are welcoming you here for our very first brand new episode. So we are excited and happy to be back as a podcast after a five year hiatus and the goal is the same. We want to be a trusted voice in the communities that we represent which has expanded from the Bend/Redmond community to the Eugene/Springfield community. And we want to bring good information, and we want to inspire people who are interested in purchasing or selling real estate and just bring some good community information out there. Each week, we will kick off with a brief market report, basically in the moment report of what is going on in the market from week to week. And then we will roll into interviews with local people and businesses in the community and pontificate about
important real estate topics:
what’s going on in the community and what’s going on in the economy, things that are important for people who are interested in buying or selling real estate. And finally, we have a segment called Kip’s Tips. I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but each week I’ll be offering up short morsels of advice for local buyers and sellers. So this week, our show is going to be looking into the crystal ball for 2022. And we will be offering up some insights through our lenses as to what the market is going to do in the Bend/Redmond area and Eugene/Springfield area. So, in the studio today, I have my trusty sidekick Ryan Neal, one of our agents in our Eugene office. Hello, Ryan.
Ryan Neal:
Hello Kip. It’s great to be here today.
Kip Lohr:
So you feel like kicking off our inaugural weekly market report?
Ryan Neal:
Sure thing, all right, let’s go into the weekly market update. So first, a market update for Bend. Let’s talk some numbers. This is the latest data that we have as of the day we’re recording the show, which is January 31st of 2022. So through the month of January we had a median sale price of $689,000. Pending sales are at a median of $730,000. So I think a lot of folks have been kind of low key on the sidelines looking for a home and have been hoping that prices would drop during these winter months, typically a slower season in Bend, but that is certainly not been the case. We’re really seeing exactly the opposite right now: prices are still increasing. And, you know, with that pending median of $730,000, it looks like we’re ready to hit record sale prices in February. We’ll see how things develop. And honestly, even we’re surprised at that level of appreciation. We were suspecting that price growth would be flattening a bit in Bend as we head toward the spring buying season. But that simply hasn’t been the case. And that’s really just because inventory is so low right now in Bend. And you know, that’s especially true at these price points in both the kind of lower and middle ends of the market. Right now, we have a total of only 132 residential properties active in Bend right now. And all these together have a median list price of $850,000. So that means that the inventory we do have is weighted more toward the upper end of the market. There are only 16 homes for sale right now between $400,000 and $650,000. So basically, it’s a wasteland right now in the lower to middle end of Bend’s market. If you’re shopping for a home at these price points, we’re thinking you’re probably going to want to wait until the spring or summer, with the caveat that we might see a pretty significant surge of buyers in the early part of the season. You know, a lot of folks have been on the sidelines just not seeing anything pop up. And when homes do start to get listed in early spring, you know, there could be a kind of rush on those properties that become available. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that prices are not just going to continue to climb from here. Inventory, we’re expecting to stay pretty low. So that’s just the unfortunate reality of Bend’s market. So moving on to Eugene, it’s a pretty similar situation here. Through January, the median sale price was up to $440,000, and that matches the record highs that we saw during the fall, I think it was October of 2021. So as for Eugene’s inventory, there are only 96 properties currently on the market, residential properties. As for detached single family homes, there are only 64 on the market. So that’s just not much. You know, Eugene has close to 200,000 people. So that’s incredibly low. Listings, though, are up a bit month-over-month. 143 new homes came up for sale during the month of January, but buyers are still grabbing them up faster than sellers can list them. So in the lower to middle end of the market, things are not quite as bad as they are in Bend. There are 28 sub $400,000 properties available right now and 17 available between $400,000 and $550,000. But it’s been the case in Eugene that with prices rising, buyers at these price points are continuing to get less and less for their dollar. It’s just a tough time to find a home, period. You know, probably a lot of buyers, unless the perfect home comes up, are going to want to wait until the spring or the summer. If you’re planning to list and you maybe want to take advantage of the light competition among sellers right now, that’s great. Just be aware that you’re not going to get an automatic sale necessarily. Some properties do continue to sit on the market. In Eugene, it’s really a combination of your location, finishes, and these various other factors. You know, talk to a real estate agent about what you should do to prepare your home to go on the market. It’s not necessarily going to be easy. So that’s a wrap for our market update for this week. Let’s move on to the main part of our show.
Kip Lohr:
Welcome back to the Revolution. I have Ryan Neal from our Eugene office in the studio today with me to share some tidbits about the 2022 real estate market. We’re going to forecast some things, and we’re going to talk about some forces in the economy that may come to play and shape our market this year. Welcome to the show, Ryan.
Ryan Neal:
Thanks for having me, Kip.
Kip Lohr:
So this is our inaugural kickoff of the real estate Revolution podcast. We’re proud to get this on the air and hopefully be a trusted voice in our communities, both in the Eugene/Springfield area and the Bend/Redmond area. We will oftentimes talk about things that affect both markets. And we will also have very market-specific podcast episodes for each market. Today we’re going to talk about real estate in 2022. And we’re going to put it into the context of the history that we saw in the market downturn in 2008 and 2009. Are we starting to see forces in the economy that threaten to mirror what we saw in 2008/2009? We’re going to give some recommendations to both buyers and sellers: should you stay or should you go and hopefully give you some good information today. So where I’d like to start out with this conversation is giving some market data from our year-in-review for 2021. And I’ll let Ryan give you some statistics from that as a kickoff point to talk about this topic today.
Ryan Neal:
Yeah, so the key word for 2021 was appreciation. And that, of course, is true in markets all across the country. Nationwide, we saw an average appreciation of 19% year over year, which is a pretty incredible number. It’s historical. It’s a record. And we’re not expecting to see the same level of appreciation in markets nationwide that we saw in 2021. However, particularly in markets like Bend and Eugene, we’re expecting to still see strong demand from buyers, you know, a lot of energy going into the market as we enter into the spring and summer buying season. So Bend last year appreciated significantly more than the national average: 26%. So the medium median sale price for all residential properties in Bend for 2021 was $645,000. That’s compared to $513,000 in 2020. So, you know, it was a pretty incredible year for real estate, and Bend’s prices are high right now. And we’re expecting to see more appreciation in 2022. Though not quite as much as what we saw last year. In Eugene, we had 19% appreciation, so pretty much in line with the national average. Homes in Eugene sold for a median of $420,000 in 2021 compared to 350,000 in 2020. So, inventory is still super low in both markets. We saw a bit of an uptick in inventory in the fall season. But, you know, basically there’s been less listing activity through the late fall and early winter than we would expect to normally see, and buying activity has remained a bit more robust than normal. So that’s been enough to shift the balance of the markets back to this situation where inventory is super low. And we’re expecting it to stay that way, at least leading up into the spring buying season when it’s the time of year people typically start to think about listing their properties. So, you know, that’s creating this kind of high pressure situation once again in our markets. But one thing that’s different this time around is interest rates are no longer at these historical lows that we saw at the beginning of 2021. Rates are higher than they were then. And we’re expecting to see more rate hikes as the year proceeds, which is going to make mortgages more expensive in both Eugene and Ben’s markets. This unaffordability has been the case for the last few years at least. But it’s becoming only more the case that these markets are increasingly out of reach for most first time homebuyers, particularly in Bend. So, you know, we’re not expecting to see quite the frenzy that we saw a year ago, even though inventory is just as low as it was then. There simply aren’t as many people that are going to be able to jump into the ring this time around.
Kip Lohr:
Yeah, and I think for folks who are looking to buy in both markets, there are a few different forces that are going to be at play. And I think mentioning the first time homebuyers in Bend and Eugene – I think that’s one of the different points between the two communities. Even with the median home prices now pushing most of the first time homebuyers out of the Bens market, there have still been a few because interest rates have remained low. There are areas in Bend that are just on the edge of affordable in that first time homebuyer market. But I think this summer, we’re going to see interest rates push out the remaining folks who are wanting to buy in that first time homebuyer price range. People will have to migrate north to Redmond and even migrate out of the Bend/Redmond area into Prineville, into La Pine. You know, we’ve had clients end up having to buy as far away as La Pine to get into homes. In Eugene, on the other hand, I think that prices are still at a point where even with increases in interest rates, we’re still going to see a little bit of first time buyer activity remain in 2022. And where this is important is our historically low inventory. I think right now we’re at less than a half a month’s worth of inventory in both markets, is that correct?
Ryan Neal:
In Eugene. It’s just over a half a month in Bend right now.
Kip Lohr:
So when you eliminate a whole buyer class, the easy calculation is that we’re going to create less demand in that buyer class, which will open up a little bit more inventory for the remaining buyers, which is true. But at the end of the day, the inventory is still so low that I don’t think it’s going to really have a very meaningful impact. We would normally consider less than six months of inventory as “low inventory” in kind of a normal market. And so, when you got to half a month or below a half a month, it’s going to take a lot of new inventory or a lot fewer buyers to really turn that tide and kind of slow down price increases. Last year, we really saw an early frenzy in the late spring, early summer and in Bend in particular, we saw buyers buying irrationally and we would see multiple offers, sometimes 20 or 30 different offers on one property, and the property would be off the market in less than a week. And typically buyers were having to come in $50,000 to $100,000 above list price. And that’s in the Bend market; Eugene’s market mirrored that, just in smaller increments. So we would still see multiple offers, with properties coming off the market in a week. But typically, we would see maybe $20,000 to $50,000 over list price getting a buyer in over the rest of the competition. Once the summer progressed last year, we saw a slowdown. Buyers just basically threw down their gloves and said enough is enough. We’re not going to fight this fight anymore. And so by the time we got to the end of the summer, even though inventory was still moving fairly briskly, we saw buyers, you know, not competing with each other as much. We saw listing prices start out too high and sellers having to do price reductions. Homes were spending more days on the market for sellers at the end of the summer. And by the time we ran into the fall, you know, the market had really settled down. In 2022, I think we’re gonna see a repeat of that in the late spring and early summer, but maybe not to the same extent we saw last year. And it won’t last as long. We’ll get back into a little bit more of normal buyer seller behavior, a little less irrationality from buyers. So you know, the first recommendation I’d have for sellers rolling into this year, is if you’re wanting to sell your house this year if you want top dollar, if you want to ride that last wave of irrationality, then you want to be on the market no later than mid to late spring. If you wait untill mid to late summer, I think the exuberance from buyer activity is going to slow down. And there’s going to be more competition out there for the dollars that buyers are going to be spending, so you’ll you’ll kind of miss your opportunity for multiple offers and, you know, significant dollars over list price. If you’re a buyer, on the other hand, I would say that you need to be patient. I know you’ve been looking all winter long at Zillow, or Trulia, or Realtor.com and not seeing anything of interest. And you’re getting worried that maybe there’s no inventory out there. Don’t be those first buyers through the gate, unless really the issue for you is that you want your dream home, and it pops up in the spring, and you’ve got to fight for it. Then, you know, by all means go for it, but if you’re looking for less competition, less likelihood of, you know, 30 offers on a home or 10 offers on a home, then I would wait till mid to late summer for that. What do you think about that?
Ryan Neal:
Yeah, totally agree. You know, the basic trend that we see is that there’s an uptick of listings starting in the spring, but we have these severe inventory shortages which are happening in the winter. So the time of maximum FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, is definitely the early spring and heading into the late spring. So you know, in the summer, we’re expecting that listing activity is going to continue to be more robust. So buyers are just going to have more choices. Now, that doesn’t necessarily translate into lower prices. You know, there may be less competition on any given property. If there’s another listing, which is comparable, then, you know, that’s going to divide the burden, between two or more different properties. Whereas if you’re trying to purchase a home in the early spring, there might only be one property that meets these particular parameters that a bunch of different buyers are after. We aren’t just seeing this kind of buying pressure at these first time home buyer price points. It’s really all throughout both Bend and Eugene’s markets, you know, even going into the luxury range. We saw a huge uptick in the $1 million to $1.5 million price point in Bend, where significantly more buyers were entering the market than there were new listings. And that’s definitely a new phenomenon. In Bend’s luxury, $1 million-plus market, there’s tended to be an excess of inventory. But last year, 2021, we saw exactly the opposite, at least at that $1 million to $1.5 million price point. In Eugene, the $700,000 to $1 million price range was particularly active. There were a ton of buyers trying to get these premium homes in Eugene. But Eugene has never had a very big inventory of premium homes, and there simply haven’t been too many buyers going after them. But that really started to shift in 2021. So you know, in 2022, we’re expecting that these price points to have buying pressure, and they’re going to continue to be active. People want to live in Bend and Eugene, and you know, especially in Eugene, there simply isn’t a big inventory of premium homes.
Kip Lohr:
Yeah, that’s right. And I would say to your point, in Bend, when we start talking about how interest rates are going to affect first time homebuyers, again, it’s not just first-time homebuyers that are going to be affected. You know, even folks in that sub-million dollar or just a hair over a million dollar range, you know, there’s the cash buyer who’s going to walk in and buy a vacation home or a second home. But there are also folks who, you know, have very upper-middle class incomes who are still financing. And even though interest rates going up aren’t necessarily pushing them out of the market and they have the capability to buy, I think we’re going see see some of those second home and vacation homebuyers from out of area maybe think twice when interest rates get into the fives, mid-fives, or maybe as high as the sixes. So, you know, it’s a good point to say that this is happening throughout all of the price points in both markets, that we’re seeing this kind of pressure at these different price points, but they are still going to be affected by interest rates going up this year. And I think the other thing that’s interesting about all this is that a lot of the higher end market is being driven by folks who are relocating from out-of-area. And it’s not folks that are coming in to speculate in the markets, either in Eugene or Bend, which is different than what we saw in the exuberance leading up to the market crash in 2008. So there are folks who are coming into our market, and many of those folks are coming to our markets because of their companies allowing their employees to relocate and work remotely for the rest of the time that they’re working for the company. So we’re seeing folks coming in from different metro areas who are interested in both the Bend and Eugene markets because of their livability. And so all of us who live in these communities, we know how wonderful living in Eugene is and how wonderful living in Central Oregon and Bend is. And we’re on the radar of folks from all over the country. And so the pressures that we’re seeing this year are still going to remain, they’re just going to slow down a little bit. And so instead of a 26% increase year-over-year like we saw last year in Bend, perhaps we’ll see more of a 10% to 15% increase and a similar percentage increase in the Eugene market. So what does that mean for sellers? We’ve talked a lot about the pressures on buyers, and I think what what we have going on this year is kind of the end of the road, in my opinion, of the big increase in value that we’ve seen over the last almost three to four years in both markets. So for those of you who have been holding out to kind of reach the peak before you get out and pull your equity, you know, we’re getting there. And, you know, I talk to sellers all the time who are asking for kind of that sweet spot, is it time, is it time. And the thing that’s difficult is, if you’re relocating out of area and you can take your your money and run, it’s probably a good time to go now. But if you’re just trying to trade into a different home in the same community, obviously prices are going up. And so you sell at the top, but you’re also buying at the top in the same community. So it’s kind of a wash there, depending on the home that you’re trying to find. So, you know, what do you think? What are you seeing in Eugene in particular?
Ryan Neal:
Yeah, so I mean, the number one factor to consider if you are looking to trade up or even to downsize into a different home is just the extremely limited inventory that we’re seeing in our local markets. So if you’re selling your home, the question is, are you going to be able to find the property that you’re looking for? And if the right property does come on the market, how much competition is there going to be? And, you know, to what extent does that feed into a scenario where you have a bidding war, and you end up having to overpay relative to what you’re able to sell your current property for? Because, you know, there are definitely types of properties that are in demand in Eugene and in Bend much more so than others, certain types of properties, certain neighborhoods with certain kinds of features that are much more likely to have 15, 20, 25 buyers who are chomping at the bit to get in there.
Kip Lohr:
Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that the other thing to think about is if you’re moving out of area, you know, there are these other areas in the in the country depending on where you’re going that are experiencing the same pressures. And I just talked to a seller this week who is relocating to California. And obviously the California market has been traditionally, you know, hot, on fire, and also the median home prices in many of the communities in California are higher than even in Bend. So in terms of your buying power, you know, you sell the top in Bend and you sell the top in Eugene, and you go into one of these other communities that are also on fire, and their median home prices are even higher, you know, it can be difficult to make that move. One of the reasons we have such low inventories is that sellers who would normally be thinking about selling, you know, maybe scaling down, there’s just nothing to buy. And so they’re kind of stuck in the homes that they’re stuck in. And so at this point, you’ve got to weigh the benefits of pulling your equity out at the top. And then also, you know, where are you going to be moving that equity too. So, we’re going to take a break. And when we come back, we’re going to continue the conversation. This is the Real Estate Revolution. And thanks for joining us today. Welcome back, this is Kip Lohr with LOHR Real Estate. You are on the Real Estate Revolution podcast. And I have Ryan Neal from our local Eugene office in the studio today, and we are talking about what the heck is going on or what’s going to go on in the 2022 real estate market. And I think we can’t have that conversation without talking about the economy and the exterior market forces that, you know, influence the market. And one of the big questions that both Ryan and I get a lot is, are we in a real estate bubble? Are we in a real estate bubble, Ryan?
Ryan Neal:
Well, people have been asking us this question, basically, for the past at least five or six years. I mean, basically people who have been living in our communities for a certain amount of time, they see prices rising. And you know, there’s this kind of incredulity which can set in which is, you know, just this many years ago, it cost this much to purchase a home in Bend or Eugene, and now it’s this much. And it’s just kind of hard to believe. People see prices rising, and you know, the old saying is “What goes up must come down.” So, we we get that line of thinking coming into it.
Kip Lohr:
And I think that to folks out there who feel like it’s got to come down, right, we’re getting to the end of the show, aren’t we – I think the short answer to that question, as we alluded to earlier in the show is, is no. At least in the short-term, through the rest of this year, we’re going to see the market go up. So, you know, really we need to be looking at, well, what goes up does not necessarily have to go down. And so the next phase is, what happens when we kind of flatten out? And when is that going to happen? And what are the forces that are going to contribute to that? Obviously, we’ve talked about interest rates going up. And you were reading an interesting article today, talking about how we’ve got possibly three different economic bubbles going on right now. And I think that that’s an interesting conversation. Maybe a little blurb from that can give some insight into the conversation that we’re having.
Ryan Neal:
Yeah, so when we talk about bubbles, I mean, there are different classes of assets, obviously. And, you know, historically, what we’ve tended to see is that one particular class of asset will have will start to have these inflated values. So of course, in 2006 and 2007, the housing market became quite inflated, formed a bubble. And we all remember what happened when that bubble popped. And when the housing bubble did pop, that also, you know, sent the stock market crashing and caused all this broader economic turmoil. But basically, what was happening there was, it was really the housing market that had gotten out of control and for various reasons ended up dragging the rest of the economy with it. So this article that I was reading this morning, the name of the author isn’t coming to mind. But anyway, what he was suggesting was that we basically have three simultaneous asset bubbles that are happening right now. First of all, we have an asset bubble in the equities market. Stock prices, you know, basically, throughout 2021 were really surging and reached all-time-highs in all sorts of different indexes. And what we’re seeing, you know, toward the end of 2021 and at the beginning of this year is that those values are starting to fall a bit back down to earth. And when you’re looking at different indexes, you know, that’s happening to different degrees. But something interesting that we’re seeing right now is that we have these big stocks like Apple, Microsoft, these big tech stocks, these kind of blue chip stocks, that their values are still higher. They’re close to all time highs. But there are all sorts of other smaller stocks that are making up these indexes which are pretty far off from the all time highs that we saw in 2021. You know, in many cases, they’re down 50% or more from the highs that we saw last year, and we’re already seeing signs that our equity markets are beginning to fray at the edges. And we may be seeing more of that, you know, as we go further into 2022. Another category of asset bubble that this author was talking about were commodities. Oil, you know, is a particular example, the most obvious example. We all see gas prices going up, you know, kind of racing pretty fast into the stratosphere. And there are, of course, different reasons economically why that’s the case. But this would be just another example of a different kind of bubble which we’re seeing right now. And then the other example, of course, is the housing market. We saw prices increase at a pretty incredible rate. And it’s at the point now where the rate of appreciation that we saw, looking at it from a historical level, we have to call it a bubble. And that’s because appreciation is happening so fast.
Kip Lohr:
Right. And I think that, you know, we see some of these other market indicators – we have inflation, we see interest rates going up, and it’s easy for people to think that the sky is falling, and the bottom of the real estate market is ready to fall out. And I think, looking back at the Great Recession, you know, the crash of 2008 in the real estate market, what’s interesting to me is that on average in the US, straight across the board, median home prices dropped by 15% from the peak in 2006 and 2007 to the bottom in 2009. And then, in our Bend market, we saw an astounding 60% drop in the median home prices from the peak to the trough. In Eugene, we saw a drop of 12.1%. And what were the forces back then that are similar? You know, how are they different from what we’re seeing today? And I think, really, the most important difference is what we see in Bend. So in Bend, we saw an exuberance in the increase of values mostly because of speculation. We saw a lot of out-of-state money coming in. You know, the markets in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Bend, the one thing that they all had in common, and why they got hit the hardest during the great recession was all this speculative money coming in, people thinking they were going to make a quick buck. On top of that, we had very easy money, interest rates were low, and we had stated income loans, which allowed people to get loans that really were not in line with the income that they actually had. And when the music stopped, there were a lot of people who lost their homes, because they were highly-leveraged and had no equity when things started going the wrong way. And they were kind of caught with their pants down. What’s different today is that the locals who have remained in Central Oregon who got bit during the Great Recession, they learned their lesson. I worked with many, many, many folks during that time and helped them do short sales on their home then buy different homes, you know, several years later, once they were able to repair their credit. And almost uniformly straight across the board, what I found is that people learned how to budget their money. When you’re on cash-and-carry, you can’t get a credit card. You can’t borrow money for a car, you can’t borrow money to buy a house. You have to learn to operate your personal finances with what she got. And it was a big blow to peoples’ egos. You know, you lose your home, it doesn’t feel great. And so when we got people back into the market, they were coming in with large down payments, and they were not spending more money than they could afford to spend. And so, couple that with a bunch of responsible homeowners with a lot of equity now. And then, we do not have a speculative market in Central Oregon anymore. People are buying in the market to live in the market or to live part time in the market. And they’re bringing well-paying jobs with them in the case of remote workers. So, we’ve got a lot more stability in Central Oregon than we did during 2008 and 2009 when the market crashed. So would we see another drop in Bend like we did in? My short answer to that is “No way.” I talked to folks in the terms of zombie apocalypse. You know that our market is not going to change direction very dramatically barring the zombie apocalypse. And what I mean by the “zombie apocalypse” is obviously global market forces like what happened during ’08 and ’09 that create a, you know, center of gravity that kind of pulls everybody with them. So, if we look at a market like Eugene, and Bend today, and we say, well, in the worst case of 2008-09, the Eugene/Springfield market dropped only 12%, and Portland, Oregon only dropped 13.9%. So I would expect in a zombie apocalypse situation, Central Oregon, you know, Bend/Redmond would be on par with that. And so what we see today is that it would take extreme market forces downward pressure to get the prices to come down in Bend in particular. And I think the Eugene/Springfield area is on par with that as well. The markets are so stable, the demand is so high, the supply is so low, that even under some of the worst economic conditions, I just don’t expect the real estate market in our local areas to come down enough to have folks wait for that, number one, and worry about it, number two. What do you think?
Ryan Neal:
I mean, if we’re envisioning doomsday scenarios, there are all sorts of things which could happen that could lead to a significant decline in housing prices in the Bend and Eugene markets. But, you know, if we’re looking at run of the mill economic factors such as inflation, such as interest rate increases, none of these individual factors or even taken together as a whole are going to change the basic picture that people want to live here, and more people want to live here then you know, are able to find a home. Our markets are extremely tight, demand is extremely high. And apart from the kind of zombie apocalypse scale of event, you know, meteors showering down from the sky, World War 3, that kind of thing, there aren’t going to be any significant forces which are going to cause demand to drop.
Kip Lohr:
Right, right. And I think really, what’s important here is that it’s quality of life that is making people relocate to the Eugene/Springfield area and the Bend/Redmond area. And those of us who already live in these communities, we already know that the quality of life here is amazing. And so, decisions to purchase or sell need to be made, ultimately, bottom line, not from an economic standpoint but from a quality of life standpoint. The markets in both areas are stupid-expensive, and prohibitively expensive for many, unfortunately. So for the folks who can afford to live in our communities, really, this has got to be a quality of life decision. So for people who are looking to buy, be patient. You know, we’re going to see probably another 10 to 15% increase in value in Bend and Redmond, and probably pretty similar to that in the Eugene/Springfield area. So really, it’s about finding the right home. And that’s going to take time. You need to be ready to take time and be patient. Well, there you have it, folks. That’s a taste of things to come in 2022. But before we end the show today, let’s take another break and then we’ll hit you with our final segment. Hello, and welcome back to The Real Estate Revolution Podcast. I’m Kip Lohr, your host with LOHR Real Estate, and it is time for Kip’s Tips. With inventory low and competition fierce, we’ve decided to dedicate the next several episodes of Kip’s Tips to buyers. We’re going to share patented LOHR Real Estate tricks of the trade and strategies to help your offer stand out in the crowd and ultimately help you win the day. With no further ado, this week’s tip is “Know Thy Seller.” Okay, so what does that mean? What it means is that the days of being the highest all- cash offer and winning the day are over and that sellers typically are going to have 15 to 30 offers to look at, and so to say that they are splitting hairs to make their decision is an understatement. And the most minute detail might be the difference between them choosing your offer or choosing another buyer’s offer. So understanding what motivates the seller, and what are the top priorities and most important things to the seller. Each seller has different priorities, has different motivations. So having an agent who is going to reach out to the listing agent and try to glean as much information from that agent as to what are the most important things to their seller when presenting an offer is paramount. An example would be, perhaps the seller is moving out of state, and they actually need an extended time to close. Maybe they purchased a home in another area, and they just need a longer close time. Or maybe they need to occupy the home after close to give them more time to get packed up and get moved out. Another example is, you know, obviously, that there are people who have lived in their homes for a long time and made it their castle, and they want to make sure that their home goes to a good home. Here in the state of Oregon, the state has banned the quote unquote “love letters” to the seller. They’re no longer allowed. However, that does not mean that your agent can’t reach out to the other agent and just give them your story, give them a compelling reason why you and your family would be a great fit and be a good home for their home. And so, another example might be working with a local lender who will be trusted by the real estate community and give that seller and that listing agent confidence that you can actually close the deal. Another example would be the relationship between the two agents. You know, there are agents that may advise their client to pick an offer solely based on the relationship that they have with another agent knowing that they’ll be able to get the job done. So the most important takeaway here is that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it is imperative to take the time to craft an offer that takes into account all of the different possibilities of what a seller may be looking for. Well, that’s about all we have time for today. I want to thank everybody out there for listening to our inaugural Real Estate Revolution Podcast. I’m hoping you’ll join us next week. And I want to thank Ryan Neal of our LOHR Real Estate Eugene office for joining me today – thank you, Ryan.
Ryan Neal:
Thank you Kip and thanks everyone for tuning in.
Voiceover:
Thank you for joining the Revolution. We are over and out until next week, when we’ll continue to fill you in on all that matters most in our local Bend and Eugene real estate sees. See you next time on The Real Estate revolution.
Further reading
When Will the Housing Market Crash (and Housing Prices Drop) in Oregon?
Eugene Seller’s Agents: How to Know Who’s Best for You
The Ultimate Bend, Oregon Relocation Guide
Eugene Oregon Relocation: The Ultimate Guide
Best Places to Live in Oregon: Bend vs. Eugene
Tips for First-Time Home Buyers in Oregon
Looking to Retire in Bend, Oregon? Here’s What to Consider.
Looking to Retire in Eugene, Oregon? Here’s What to Consider.
Best Neighborhoods in Bend Oregon: Our Definitive List
Best Neighborhoods in Eugene Oregon: Our Definitive List